This National Survey is one of a few major studies on the strengths of marriage versus the exclusive focus on problems in marriage. Using a sample of 50,379 married couples (both partners) from all 50 states, this survey used a comprehensive marital assessment tool called ENRICH which focuses on 20 significant areas and contains 195 questions.

This survey identified the Top Ten Strengths of Happy Marriages and discovered some new areas not found important in past studies of marriage. Using these top ten strengths, it is possible to discriminate between happy and unhappy marriages with 93% accuracy.

Five categories were found to have the greatest importance for happy marriages, ranked in order of importance as follows: communication, couple closeness, couple flexibility, personality issues and conflict resolution. While most past studies have identified the importance of communication and conflict resolution, the significance of couple flexibility and couple closeness demonstrate their growing impact in our high stress society.

This National Survey is one of a few major studies on the strengths of marriage versus the exclusive focus on problems. Using a sample of 50, 575 premarital couples (both partners) from all 50 states, whose marriages were about to create a stepfamily, this survey used a comprehensive premarital assessment tool called PREPARE-MC which focuses on 20 significant areas and contains 195 questions.

This survey identified the Five Keys to Intimacy, which is made up of the top five strengths that clearly distinguish great relationships from unsatisfying ones, along with the Top Ten Strengths of Happy versus Unhappy Couples Creating Step Families. Using these top ten strengths, it is possible to discriminate between happy and unhappy marriages with 90% accuracy. This survey also identifies the top twelve Remarriage Stumbling Blocks.

The top five categories in rank order of importance were personality, communication, conflict resolution, leisure activities, and couple flexibility. While most past studies have identified the importance of communication and conflict resolution, the significance of couple flexibility and couple closeness identified demonstrates their growing importance in our high stress society.

A national sample of 24,671 married couples who took the ENRICH Inventory in the years 2000 and 2001 was investigated. The sample was split into three distinct groups based on their Positive Couple Agreement (PCA) scores, a measure of consensus, on the Spiritual Beliefs content scale of the ENRICH Inventory. An association between high spiritual agreement and the level of closeness a couple experienced was observed.

This study examined spouse abuse from the ecological perspective using the data from a national sample of 20,951 couples that took the ENRICH couple inventory. ENRICH assessed three ecological areas -contextual and socio-cultural factors; individual traits and behaviors; and couple interaction processes. Abusive individuals and couples showed significantly lower levels of relational functioning in all three ecological areas assessed by ENRICH.

Once your church or community has a trained and
certified PREPARE/ENRICH professional, you might
consider establishing a Marriage Mentor Program
to help premarital couples get more preparation or married couples get the assistance
they need for healthier relationships.